Summary

While Temur Marvel was far and away the most popular Marvel variant at Pro Tour Amonkhet, a different variant was up and around the top tables throughout the weekend in the hands of Reid Duke, William Jensen, and others. This variant is Sultai Marvel, which keeps the blue and green cards from Temur Marvel, but adds a Delirium subtheme that allows it to play a less combo-focused, more midrange-grindy game.

Servant of the Conduit and Rogue Refiner are near auto-includes for this deck. Some Temur Marvel lists, namely that payed by Yuuya Watanabe, don’t include Servant, but the extra mana and mana-fixing it provides is very valuable to this deck. Rogue Refiner the most prominent mainboard reason to play blue, as it’s an excellent source of energy and a card on a sizable body that’s good at attacking and blocking. Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is the go-to Aetherworks Marvel target, and this deck can afford to play only 3 due to its powerful midrange and late-game cards that are scattered around the rest of the deck.

Ishkanah, Grafwidow is the main draw to playing a Delirium subtheme, as the spider queen offers an excellent source of blockers on a relatively cheap body. It also has the ability to win the game on its own through the activated ability. Noxious Gearhulk is another powerful card to find off of Aetherworks Marvel, and is an excellent target for the 1-of Traverse the Ulvenwald.

Attune with Aether, Woodweaver’s Puzzleknot, and Aetherworks Marvel are best buds at this point, and I fully agree with cutting a copy of Woodweaver’s Puzzleknot. It essentially only serves as a combo enabler, and this deck focuses a lot less on the combo, making Puzzleknot less than ideal in many scenarios. Fatal Push is the sole dedicated creature removal spell in this deck, and its efficiency is the reason for its inclusion as a playset. This deck can be rather mana-hungry, so being able to kill a creature for 1 mana is vital to this deck’s plan.